European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Hilary Benn Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 22nd October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), who is the vice-chair of the Exiting the European Union Committee, and with whom I have the pleasure to serve. May I also say to the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Sir David Lidington) that he is absolutely right that the vast majority of the withdrawal agreement is as it was before, which is why I cannot understand why the Government did not publish in draft the bits of the Bill that have been available in Whitehall for ages so that Members had a chance to read them a long time ago, rather than scrabbling around since eight o’clock last night, because it would have dealt with some of the justifiable objections to the speed with which the Government are trying to push this through?

I do not know whether that earlier draft contained clause 36, but I must say my eyes widened when I read this statement:

“It is recognised that the Parliament of the United Kingdom is sovereign.”

Do we really need to say that about ourselves in legislation—was that ever in doubt? I suspect the reason it is in there is to soften the blow when certain Government Members realise—although the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith) made the point—that the European Communities Act will be repealed and then the provisions will be stuck back in for the length of the transitional period.

The other thing we have learned about is the consequences of the new Irish protocol for trade between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, and I return to the point that was put to the Prime Minister by several Members, but to which there was no answer: the question why goods moving from Northern Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom will require an exit summary declaration, because, as I understand it, that is only necessary if goods are leaving the customs territory of the European Union. Is that correct, because I thought we were told—it says it in the new protocol—that Northern Ireland will be in the customs territory of the United Kingdom? So the question is this: if Northern Ireland is in the customs territory of the United Kingdom what are those goods exiting, because they are in the United Kingdom customs territory? I am afraid there has been no answer, because I do not think the attempted explanations really square.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend raises the most compelling point about the Northern Ireland protocol. Is he also as astonished as I am that in some of the slight impact assessments on the Northern Ireland protocol everything about customs administration, VAT, tariffs administration, agrifood regulation and manufactured goods regulation is non-monetised—the Government do not even know how much this is going to cost?

[Hilary Benn]

I was surprised when I read that in the impact assessment, and the truth is that a whole load of questions remain about how the system will work. How will we identify goods at risk, as it is described, of passing into the Republic of Ireland? That is for another day.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Hilary Benn]

I will give way one more time.

[Richard Graham]

The right hon. Gentleman wrote in September that it would be

“utterly irresponsible for the Government to be rushing headlong towards”

no deal. Now that the House knows that the Government have a deal on the table, surely he and all his colleagues, who were elected on a manifesto pledge to respect the result of the referendum, should support this deal, rather than risk no deal. Is it not the case that no deal will ever be good enough for him?

[Hilary Benn]

The direct answer to the hon. Gentleman, with whom I also have the pleasure of serving on the Exiting the European Union Committee, is that to attempt to say to Members that the choice has to be between a bad deal—this is worse than the previous Prime Minister’s deal—and no deal is not a very attractive proposition. During the passage of this Bill—if it gets its Second Reading—I hope that we will attempt to improve some elements of it.

Clause 30 goes to the heart of the point about no deal, because the withdrawal agreement makes provision for the possibility of an extension to the transition period, which, at present, will end in 14 months’ time. Clause 30 says that the House can agree to a further extension, but it requires a Minister of the Crown to move the motion in the first place. The situation I am worried about is what if the Minister of the Crown fails to come to the House, does not move a motion proposing that the Government should request to the joint committee that the transitional period be extended, and the answer is that we would fall out without a deal in 14 months’ time if an agreement had not been reached. The House has voted on several occasions to make it clear that it is opposed to leaving with no deal, and there are arguments on either side as to whether people think that is a good thing or a bad thing, so I flag this up at this stage, because we will need to deal with that point—I gather that an amendment is on its way if it has not already been tabled—and to safeguard against it.

There is a second related problem to clause 30. What happens if a deal has not been negotiated by the end of December 2022 when the two-year extension has been applied for and secured? Now we would be facing exactly the same difficulty: the possibility of exiting without an agreement at the end of the transition period. In those circumstances, there is no way under the agreement that the British Government can get a further extension, so we have to find a way of ensuring that a deal is concluded by that time.

Ministers claim that, because of the high degree of alignment, it will all be done really quickly. I would just observe that took three and a quarter years to get to this point, and it took Canada six to seven years to get an agreement. Michel Barnier said this morning that he thought it would take around three years to negotiate such a deal, so we will be looking for assurance from the Minister in Committee that under no circumstances will the United Kingdom leave the European Union at the end of the transition period without a deal. I think another amendment may be on its way about that. The same point is relevant to citizens’ rights, which have not been raised much in the debate so far. We could do with clarification from Ministers, because if the transition is extended, will they also change the deadline by which EU citizens have to apply for settled status?

As I said on Saturday, I will not be voting for the Bill, above all because of the political declaration—I do not have a problem with the withdrawal agreement—which is not the right approach to take, because it is not good for business. I am very surprised, like other hon. Members, that the Government have just blithely said, “We are not going to undertake an economic assessment,” and I assume that the reason for that is simple. They did one before which showed that a free trade agreement is the second-worst outcome up for the economy after no deal, and they do not really want to have to point that out again.

My final point is about clause 31, and it links to the economic impact of the political declaration. The clause deals with the oversight of negotiations on the future relationship, and it appears to give Members some oversight, some say, over the nature of the negotiations on the future relationship, but proposed new section 13C(3) of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 says:

“A statement on objectives for the future relationship…must be consistent with the political declaration of 17 October 2019”.

I simply point out that if, in one, two or three years’ time, the House realises that the objectives of such a free trade agreement are not in our economic interests, because we finally realise the damage it will do to the economy—we have seen what businesses have said and the concerns they have expressed—the current wording of the clause gives no opportunity for Parliament to get a Government to change those objectives. I do not think we should accept the Bill on that issue, as it is currently worded.